Although statistically the San Fernando Valley was a safer place this year, there was no shortage of tragedy.
Adding to fears, the year began and ended with the killings of peace officers, the very professionals on whom residents depend to keep their communities safe.
In February, a rookie officer with the Los Angeles Police Department was gunned down outside a Northridge house by a teen-ager who also killed his father before killing himself. And this month, a fatal gun battle erupted between a robber and a Los Angeles County Safety Police officer in the parking lot of a Canoga Park shoe store.
Yet despite a number of high-profile crimes, 1994 statistics through Nov. 30--the latest available--show that homicides fell 44% from the same period last year, from 129 to 72.
In fact, more people were killed in car accidents in the Valley than were slain. Rapes, robberies, aggravated assaults and all property crimes except auto burglaries also fell.
The Los Angeles Police Department attributes this year's drop in violent crime to the Northridge earthquake, a gang truce and the impact of community-based policing. It also happens to follow a nationwide trend.
But despite the reductions in overall crime, the public's perception of violence has grown, in large part due to the random nature of many high-profile crimes and because many feel their middle-class Valley neighborhoods are no longer immune.
For Kenneth Brondell, a retired LAPD detective who has lived in the Valley for nearly four decades, 1994 was the year that random violence struck home.
"It used to be there weren't as many guns, and people just weren't as violent," said Brondell, the father of slain LAPD Officer Christy Lynne Hamilton, who died in the line of duty this year. "But nowadays, if you just happen to be walking down the street, driving your car or shopping at a mall, you become a victim."
The slaying of Hamilton, a 45-year-old LAPD rookie, was one of the year's first murders.
A bullet tore through an opening in Hamilton's bulletproof vest and into her chest as she responded to a report of gunshots at the Northridge home of 17-year-old Christopher Golly.
Hamilton became a victim of Golly's plans to kill his father, 49-year-old Steven Golly, then ambush police officers responding to the crime, police said.
